The butter being whacked first thing this morning, as per Julia Child’s intricate instructions, with an attentive audience.

After the dough is done “resting” a few more times, we undertake the following steps with military precision.

We don’t have the specialized cutter Child prescribes (it looks an awful lot like a mysterious wedding gift we saw Celeste Holm scrutinize in High Society last night) , so we might have to use an apple corer or a cheese grater. We should be done six hours from now.

In the meantime I’m going out to the garden to admire the morning glories and try to make myself weed.